Should I buy?

[eddyc]

So here goes...

I was given a really crummy PC about 8 months ago and it has been sitting in my room doing nothing. It is a foxconn 45GM motherboard and an E2140 cpu.

My girlfriend is still working on her even crummier single core 1.6GHz laptop and needs something a bit meatier to do some video editing.

Having read some amazing overclocking reviews of the E2140 (people seem to be able to get it to 3GHz and above no sweat) I got over excited and decided that I could bring the box back from the dead by spending a very small amount of money on cooling and by nabbing an HDD from somewhere.

Unfortunately my initial foray into clocking the chip have not been too successful. I have not been able to get above 2GHz without the IGP going mental and screwing everything up (flashing screen, blurry, frozen).

I think the problem is that the multi is only x8 on this chip so you need a really high FSB to get a decent clock.

So here is the big question: Should I buy a new motherboard?

I am looking at the Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L. Pretty cheap and one of the reviews even specifies getting good results with the E2140 on this board.

Is it worth it? Or should I just spend the minimum and accept the chip sticking at 2GHz?

 

[sepulchre]

try asking for some help in the overclocking forum before splashing any cash out

 

[eddyc]

Thanks for the reply.

To be honest I have pretty much given up on that board. I did have a thread a while a go trying to OC on this board but for some reason I could never get any of the BIOS settings to stick. I have tried recently and still have the same problem.

I can only overclock using the awful piece of software that is downloadable from the foxconn website: Fox One. It gives you control over the FSB but there are no options for voltage control or memory ratio or anything like that.